Producers John P. Blessington and Liz Kineke from CBS Religion and Culture Series spoke to New York’s Religion Communicators Council at lunch today in a conference room in the Mormon temple near Lincoln Center.

The two talked about their love for producing television documentaries on topic’s like this year’s line up — unemployment, the environment, immigration, and pluralism — all from a faith perspective.

The two won a 2011 Wilbur award from the RCC for their documentary, “Haiti: Religion’s Response to Disaster,” which featured my colleague, Melissa Crutchfield, disaster relief exec at UMCOR, (you can hear her on Youtube at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-TEg7om4y4). I didn’t see the Haiti documentary but I think it included the story of our beloved UMCOR colleague Sam Dixon who died after being trapped in the collapsed Hotel Montana in Port-Au-Prince.

Blessington spoke about making the decision to focus on Haiti, even though, “We knew there would be fatigue on the issue of Haiti.” The producers didn’t shoot new footage in Haiti, but relied on B-roll from Church World Service and other faith-based relief agencies.

The discussion was mostly in the form of a Q and A. I asked if the producers would consider another topic that is often seen as heated and confrontational in culture and religion — sexuality as a gift from God. I mentioned the cover story in today’s New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/19/us/19gays.html about the struggle of evangelical college students to affirm their sexuality identity.

But Blessington said they couldn’t cover that. Any television show on sexuality and religion would irritate too many viewers he said. Hmmmmm..

That’s too bad since their documentaries seems in-depth and compassionate. And on compassion, Blessington mentioned that he loves the Charter for Compassion. And who doesn’t? How can you not love a charter that overleaps religious differences to unite the world through the golden rule? http://charterforcompassion.org

The CBS Religion and Culture series website is pretty lame, but they’re working on it. You can check out when their documentaries will be released and in which local markets at: http://www.interfaithbroadcasting.com/rc.aspx

As always, the couple of dozen religious communicators in attendance were pretty interesting people — Christian Scientist, Mormon, Jewish, Catholic. I chatted with a guy who is producing events called Laugh Out Loud to end bullying through laughter.

So the luncheon started with a discussion on Haiti and religion, and ended with laughter and bullying. And that’s my report from this month’s RCC luncheon.